Ginger and cinnamon can scar
the reserved air mercilessly
in empty rooms at half past three.
Perky utensils cramp a jar,
spatulas arranged as they are
needed. Laundered dishcloths still smell
of distant breads, a rump roast’s char.
Her kitchen wouldn’t say farewell.

You broke a bale and scattered August on
the frozen stable boards. December sagged,
her arching tail switched steadily at dawn.
We waited, talked of heifers, fogged and flagged
the conversation cleverly around
a frigid barn. December didn’t care,
she raised her head, was bearing down,
preoccupied with something in the air.
She pushed until we saw two hoofs appear;
the long gestation ruptured, braved the chill
and steaming, slipped into the atmosphere.
December stood and letting down her milk,
wasted streams of warmth around her feet.
We watched until our silence stretched like hands
through polar fronts and taciturn cool sheets.
The moon fell down, the newborn tried to stand,
but vapor veiled our faces as we laughed
together at December’s wobbly calf.

Possessing not the insight found in time,
that wraps a journey unaware, and claps
inaudibly in cadence, fractal rhymes.
We yawp, express this life in tattered scraps
of what we feel and map what seems so new,
but is it fresh or just repeated strolls;
the human gait still searching for a clue.
Insisting on rewriting former scrolls
of dead ideas there inked by bygone blooms
of us. Immersed and yoked with joy and pain,
the wonder of encounters since the womb,
our consciousness evovles beyond the brain.
Alive, unchaperoned and forth we go,
from youth through death recalling what we know.

Strung out, loosely semiprecious stringsof glinted consciousness along the bareshrugged shoulders under empty throats of land collar dawn. The last high beams are sparse through fine haired forbes where asphalt cuts its teethand whines on gasoline where jake brakes splutter.

Here stands the clustered monolithic hiveof industry, its long horrific utterextending forth with holding tank arrivesin snaking pipes there slithering inside and fed to kilns that burn the toxic clutter.

The sun is broken in rectangled gold,diagonals are X’d in stairs that grudgethe tower built where sulfured air is blown and whispers to the roar. Blue flames are thrown, incinerating waste, an android’s mother.

Networked, connected wire by the milewraps around, mechanical as a dreams,splices through pilasters, frowns and smiles twists and braids; the humming turns to screams.

And men are Lilliputians in this vastArmageddon organized by them,are manufactured chained and then condemnedColossus now incinerates the past.

Unconsciously you leave yourself behind
between my grass in cocoa quills with bits
and remnants of digested meals and it’s
as if you’ve landed here, though disinclined.
Your cries like rusty hinges, how they grind,
like swollen doors against their frames in fits.
Directly after dark the racket quits,
the dawn will show your bodies’ print defined.
The day warms up and couples venture ’round
the river’s edge with two that swim offshore.
A shadow flicks, its falling weight is more,
submerging goose in talon’s grasp ’till drowned.
Her gander’s shrieking hisses underscore
unanswered calls that slice the night with sound.